She shrugged. "He's right, and he's wrong. I am pining away for you, and I'm not his mate. His human soul cares about me, but his cat is indifferent. Friendly enough, but definitely not in a mating way. The dual-natured must find the mate that both halves of their soul desire for true happiness."

"Do you believe in that?" he asked her. "True happiness?"

She looked into his eyes, and he fell into hers, drowning in the deep, liquid dark. "I used to," she said. "Once, long ago."

"Your sister Riley is happy with Conlan," he challenged her. "Soon they will rule Atlantis together, with their son beside them."

A shadow of pain crossed her face. "I still haven't met my nephew. Tell me about him. Aidan. Is he well?"

He nodded. "He is a healthy, well-formed boy with a fierce spirit. He is definitely his parents' son."

She smiled. "I was hoping for that. For her. She deserves to be happy. But with Atlantis on the verge of war, how happy can the ruling family be?"

He frowned. "War. You think it will come to that?"

"What else? We are on the verge of world domination, if these scientists succeed in their experiments. The entire planet will become a feeding ground for vampires if somebody doesn't stop it."

He touched her face, and a bolt of pure desire raced through him, just from the feel of her cheek under his fingers. "Why does it always have to be you?"

She leaned into his touch, shivering like a frightened doe. But this was Quinn, and if she'd ever been truly frightened, he'd never seen it. Shivering with pleasure at his touch, perhaps. The idea warmed him, but she had not answered his question.

"Why you?" he repeated, knowing the answer, not wanting to hear it, but compelled to ask.

She closed her eyes and turned her face, then pressed the gentlest of kisses on his palm. "Who else?" she whispered. "Answer me that, Alaric. If not me, if not you, then who else? Do we stand by while our world is destroyed?"

"You could return to Atlantis with me. The vampires will never reach us there," he said, knowing it was futile. Knowing it wasn't even something he would want for her, and it could never be what he would do. Trapped, knowing they sat idly by while the world ended.

Never.

She knew it, too, because she moved away a little, but she smiled. "And Alaric fiddled while Rome burned," she said. "Somehow I can't see it."

"Wishes have voices sometimes."

"Do they?" She stared off into the distance, and he wondered what she saw there in the dark corners of her mind. "Mine do not. They have gone silent and still."

"The dictate of celibacy," Alaric blurted out. "It was a lie."

She slowly raised her head, sudden passion mixed with hope burning in her eyes so brightly he wanted to cry out. But then her eyes dimmed, and she turned away. "Even so. My reasons are unchanged. We have no time to discuss this now, while your friend is in danger."

She started walking away, following Jack's path, but Alaric couldn't bear it. He caught her arm and pulled her back. "And after? Will you at least hear me out?"

She stared at him for a very long time, but then she nodded. "After. Now we have to go. I have an idea of which direction they went."

Chapter 36.

Tiernan and Brennan ran. Past the rooms that looked like more labs, more holding cells, and guard quarters. They ran, and they were lucky. They didn't see anybody. They didn't see an exit, either, so they kept running, although they were slow and clumsy from captivity and trying hard to be quiet, which slowed them up even more.

They came to a branching intersection and skidded to a stop.

"Sure. All that expensive equipment and nobody could afford an exit sign," Tiernan said bitterly. "Which way?"

He shook his head. "I can only guess."

"Let's go right. We've taken enough left turns on this mission," she said.

They took the right-hand turn and ran, and when the corridor snaked left, they followed it, only to run into two very surprised people heading toward them.

Strike that. Litton and a very scary-looking vampire.

Brennan raised his hands into the air, but a buzzing sound came from behind them with no warning, and the next thing Tiernan knew, Brennan was down on the floor, straining against the electricity of the Taser charge.

"You didn't think you could escape, did you?" Litton said, sneering.

"This is the human with the resistance?" The vampire stared down at Brennan. "Easy enough to subdue." He kicked Brennan in the head.

Tiernan screamed. "No, damn you!" She dropped to Brennan's side, ripped her torn sleeve off completely, and wrapped her hand in it to pull the Taser leads from his skin. Then she lifted his head into her lap. He was bleeding, but he was still breathing. She stared up at the vampire and silently swore she'd stake him in his nonexistent heart before she died, if she had to spend the rest of her life trying.

"Now it's your turn," Litton said, and she flinched, but he obviously didn't mean her turn to get kicked in the head.

They dragged her off and strapped her back down in that damn chair. She fought them until one of the guards came into the room.

"Dr. Litton, we thought you should know that Mr. Brennan is dead," he said, and Tiernan's mind couldn't process it. No. It couldn't be the truth, but the guard was not lying; she would know with this guard. His lies had always sounded to her like sandpaper rubbing on steel, and there wasn't a hint of that now.

That couldn't be her heart, tearing apart inside her chest. And yet it was. She gave up, and let out the cry. It came from so far deep inside her that even the vampire took a step back, flinching at the sound.

"Please," she whispered to the vampire. "I would prefer the kick now."

The vampire stared down at her, puzzled, but then Litton fastened the helmet on her head, and nothing else mattered but the pain and the light. Her brain shattered and re-formed, as it had so many times before, but this time there was a difference. This time she had entirely given up hope.

She quit fighting it, but her Gift resisted in spite of her conscious mind, and when Litton kept returning, over and over, and telling her he was her friend, her Gift forced her to tell him that it was a lie.

Litton was not her friend. He never would be. He had killed the one man she'd ever wanted to spend her life with; the one man whose courage and kindness had given her hope for the future.

He finally shrieked with frustration or rage and ordered them to ramp it up to the red zone, and she laughed. The red zone might mean freedom, now that she had seen there truly was nothing left to live for. Susannah was gone. Tiernan would never live as a slave to this monster, and although her heart and mind and soul flinched away from the thought, Brennan was dead-Brennan, dead in this horrible place after two thousand years protecting humanity.

She faced death with little regret, except that she would never be able to break the story, bring this evil to the light of day. Brennan was gone, so there was no point to hoping for a future for herself.

She heard Litton's voice: "If she can't be enthralled, she may as well be dead."

She laughed. She'd won. She was free. The red haze of agony lightened and turned to a pure and indescribably beautiful white light, and suddenly everything else and everyone else fell away and a single figure stood there, limned by the light, carrying a bundle in her arms.

"Welcome," Susannah said, smiling, holding her baby. "I've missed you so much."

Tiernan smiled and stepped forward into the light.

Chapter 37.

Devon's eyes snapped open from the brief rest. He needed more, the long, healing day sleep, but there was no time and, underground, he could survive without it. He immediately warmed several bottles of blood; he and Deirdre needed the sustenance. He hated to wake her, but she would be terrified if she woke alone.

"Deirdre," he said. She shot straight up off the long bench where he'd put her when they made it to his rooms and flew at him, her eyes blind with fear.

He caught her and soothed her, repeating her name over and over until she came out of it and calmed down. She drank four bottles of blood in huge gulps, not stopping until she'd drained them all. Then she wiped her mouth and stared at him, still silent.

"I have to go after them," he said. "I need to get to Brennan. You should stay here, where it's safe. The others will see me as weak now, after Jones, and I'll have to battle at least one, if not several of them."

"I'm going with you," she said, showing her fangs.

"It's not safe."

"I have never been safe," she said flatly, and the argument was finished. She was going with him.

Chapter 38.

Alaric scanned the room. Lucas and twenty of his shifters, Jack, Alexios, Quinn, and about a dozen of her rebels all stood ready to assist. It would have to be enough.

"We have an idea of how to get in, but we're not entirely sure," Quinn said. "We're going to need to search."

"I know the direction Brennan's last mental blast came from," Alexios said. "We can use that to triangulate."

Alaric nodded. "I have been trying to reach him since I arrived, but the static you mentioned is too strong. It is almost certainly electrical interference, on an enormous scale. A laboratory full of equipment would not be enough, I don't believe, so I'm somewhat confused."

Quinn shoved a hand through her choppy dark hair. "It could be Tasers. Or an electrified cell. Or you may have to face the possibility-"

"No," Alexios said firmly. "No. The only possibility we face is the one where we find them, alive and mostly unharmed. If you believe different, feel free to get out."

"Alexios," Alaric snarled, but Quinn held up a hand, shaking her head.

"I'm sorry, Alexios," she said. "I've seen too much death lately, and I'm becoming hardened to it. We'll find them alive."

"No time like the present," Lucas said. "It's a plus to catch vamps in the daytime, even if they are underground. They'll be weaker."

They headed out the door, coordinating directions among them. Quinn stepped into the lead vehicle with Lucas and Alexios, and Alaric leapt into the air. He would fly as mist and keep an eye on her.

Just in case.

Chapter 39.

Brennan struggled to his feet. He had to get to . . . the woman. He had to save her-he couldn't fail her again.

He wouldn't fail her again, although he couldn't remember her name. It was right there, teasing the edge of his mind, but not quite available. Not quite real. It didn't matter, though. Wasn't relevant.

He had to focus, to ignore his body's weakness and fight them. They hadn't even bothered to lock his cell door yet, since he'd been collapsed on the floor and they thought he was unconscious. The two men guarding him had both gone to the door and were talking to someone else in the hall.

Fools. He'd kill them both before they realized he was awake. Kill them and rescue the woman, and then find another way to escape, if he had to kill a thousand vampires and these thugs, too. The men had guns. Brennan knew how to use a gun. Ven had taught him, in spite of his reluctance. Now he was fiercely, triumphantly, glad of it.

He took two steps, cleared the cell door, and had almost reached the thugs, who still didn't notice him, when the world-or simply thousands of years of lost emotion-crashed down on his head, smashing him to the floor. Memories flooded into him, through him: Tiernan, collapsing in his arms in Boston. His emotions soaring back, swirling around him like playful waves.

Tiernan, in the hotel room. In the forest. In Atlantis.

Tiernan, Tiernan, Tiernan, whose courage and unshaken belief in him had been enough to help him survive the ever-increasing torture of the chair and the helmet.

He remembered her. He wanted to shout and dance with joy, but the guards turned around and saw him, and anyway, the joy turned to despair, because it was too late.

Too. Late.

Because the words of the curse were tolling bells of death in his mind: YOU WILL ALSO BE CURSED TO FORGET YOUR MATE WHENEVER SHE IS OUT OF YOUR SIGHT. ONLY WHEN SHE IS DEAD-HER HEART STOPPED AND HER SOUL FLOWN-WILL YOUR MEMORY OF HER FULLY RETURN TO YOU, THUS ALLOWING YOU UNTIL THE END OF YOUR DAYS TO REPENT BRINGING DISHONOR UPON THE NAME OF THE WARRIORS OF POSEIDON.

He remembered her. Fully, as Poseidon had decreed. That could only mean one thing. He threw back his head and howled, so loud and so long that he almost didn't hear the guard rush up to the ones standing at the door. Pain ripped through his gut, tearing him apart, eviscerating him.

"Isn't Brennan dead? I told the woman that he was dead, like the scientist told me to, and she quit fighting. They killed her," the man said, hoarse with fear or excitement. "The woman. Tracy Baum. They jacked up the juice too high, and she's dead."

Brennan wanted to die. He was ready to beg for death, so that he could follow her into the next life. Soon, Tiernan, he vowed.

First, he would kill them all.

The berserker rage flamed up inside him, but this time, instead of trying to control it, he fed the fire. The sensory overload triggered another memory, and he rolled over onto all fours, hunched into himself, and slipped Alaric's vial out of his pocket. He'd forgotten it, when he'd forgotten her.

Now he would remember, and he would make sure that no one who'd had any part in harming her would ever forget. He drained the tiny bottle, feeling the energy shoot through his body like bottled starlight-if starlight were mixed with rocket fuel and magic.

"Now," he snarled, leaping to his feet. "Now you will all pay."

He called the power, and his body itself became a lightning rod for the energy and the starlight and the sheer, destructive force of a Warrior of Poseidon who had nothing left to live for.

They'd killed his woman. They would feel his wrath.